The present disclosure relates to build to order systems, and more particularly to improving portability of security application settings between information handling systems.
As the value and use of information continues to increase, individuals and businesses seek additional ways to acquire, process and store information. One option available to users is information handling systems. An information handling system (‘IHS’) generally processes, compiles, stores, and/or communicates information or data for business, personal, or other purposes thereby allowing users to take advantage of the value of the information. Because technology and information handling needs and requirements vary between different users or applications, information handling systems may also vary regarding what information is handled, how the information is handled, how much information is processed, stored, or communicated, and how quickly and efficiently the information may be processed, stored, or communicated. The variations in information handling systems allow for information handling systems to be general or configured for a specific user or specific use such as financial transaction processing, airline reservations, enterprise data storage, entertainment, and/or global communications. In addition, information handling systems may include a variety of hardware and software components that may be configured to process, store, and communicate information and may include one or more computer systems, data storage systems, and networking systems.
It has become a standard practice to deploy one or more security applications to protect vital information stored on a computer and reduce the risk of a cyber attack with an increased occurrence of attacks from viruses, worms, Trojans, junk and/or spam e-mails, spyware, phishing, pop-ups, and hackers exploiting vulnerabilities in computer systems and/or operating procedures. Well known examples of security applications may include virus protection software, firewalls (hardware/software), anti-spam software, junk e-mail filters, authentication programs, parental controls for managing access and usage, and personal account management software to manage passwords, login account numbers and similar others. Some commercially available security applications may be bundled or packaged as a security application suite containing one or more security applications such as anti-virus software, anti-spamware and anti-spyware program.
Each security application is typically configured by a user, e.g., customized, to achieve desired goals such as protecting vital/personal information. The configuration process typically includes defining or selecting configurable attributes, properties, parameters and/or settings of the security application to match user preferences. For example, a user may configure a list of approved/blocked e-mail addresses and junk/spam e-mail filter settings for an anti-spam program.
Presently, there are no tools and/or techniques to share user preferences between one computer system and another and/or between disparate security applications, e.g., between a brand ‘A’ anti-virus program and a brand ‘B’ anti-virus program. As a result, the user may experience a duplication of effort by having to manually re-enter security preferences for each computer system and/or security application. The reluctance of many users to re-enter security preferences may result in an increase in the vulnerability of computer systems to security threats on networks such as the Internet. To maintain cost and efficiency, many manufacturers of information handling systems may typically load a default setting for the security preferences, however, many of such settings may not match the user preferences.
Therefore, a need exists to facilitate sharing of security preference information between information handling systems and/or between multiple and often disparate security applications. More specifically, a need exists to develop tools and techniques for re-using user preference information to automatically configure security applications in an information handling system. Accordingly, it would be desirable to provide for efficiently configuring security applications included in an IHS, absent the disadvantages found in the prior methods discussed above.